NEXT FALL
Monday, February 20th, 2012
Geoffrey Nauffts’ Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award-nominated Next Fall has arrived at San Diego’s esteemed Diversionary Theatre in an intimate-theater production that actually surpasses its West Coast Premiere at the Geffen Playhouse, and that’s indeed saying something considering how powerful that big-bucks staging was.
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COLE
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
When asked who wrote “Some Enchanted Evening,” Cole Porter is said to have replied, “Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song,” a clever way of pointing out that unlike most of his contemporaries (Irving Berlin excluded), Cole Porter did the work of two. Not only that, but he did it better than just about anyone else around, writing both de-loveliest melodies in town and quite possibly the cleverest lyrics ever heard on a Broadway stage. “Birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love.” “I get no kick from champagne. Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all. So tell me why should it be true, that I get a kick out of you?” “He may have hair upon his chest but, sister, so has Lassie.” Did anyone do it better than Cole?
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THE COST OF THE ERECTION
Friday, February 17th, 2012
Pulitzer Prize nominee Jon Marans plays headily with time and space—and two couples’ lives—in his tantalizingly complex new play The Cost Of The Erection, masterfully directed at Hollywood’s The Blank Theatre by its founding artistic director Daniel Henning.
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THREE YEAR SWIM CLUB
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
In the time-honored tradition of fact-based underdog sports tales like Hoosiers, We Are Marshall, and the recent Moneyball, East West Players now presents the Mainland Premiere of Three Year Swim Club, Lee Tonouchi’s crowd-pleasing true story of a Hawaiian swim coach and the ragtag band of Maui plantation kids he is bound and determined to send to the 1940 Olympics.
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DISSONANCE
Monday, February 13th, 2012
You might expect a look at the behind-the-scenes interactions of a string quartet to provide little food for drama, let alone be the source of not one but two distinct plays world premiering within a year and a half of each other. You’d be wrong.
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MAN OF LA MANCHA
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
You know from the striking “a cappella” flamenco dance tableau which opens Musical Theatre West’s revival of Man Of La Mancha that you’re in for something special. Then again, with multi-award winners Davis Gaines, Lesli Margherita, and Justin Robertson in the starring roles, Nick DeGruccio directing with his accustomed brilliance and imagination, and choreographic whiz Carlos Mendoza in charge of dance numbers, musical theater aficionados could expect nothing less.
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THE SOUND OF MUSIC
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
Here’s a question I’d like census takers to ask the next time around. Is there anyone in America who hasn’t seen The Sound Of Music, either its 1964 movie adaptation—the third biggest moneymaker in film history when adjusted for inflation—or any one of a gazillion regional, community, or school productions of the Rodgers And Hammerstein classic?
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Since 2007, Steven Stanley's StageSceneLA.com has spotlighted the best in Southern California theater via reviews, interviews, and its annual StageSceneLA Awards.
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